


World's End Dancehall

by MoonGalleon22, youngavengersbigbang



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonGalleon22/pseuds/MoonGalleon22, https://archiveofourown.org/users/youngavengersbigbang/pseuds/youngavengersbigbang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after the end of the world, humanity is divided. Some choose to stand up and fight to the very end against the robotic monstrosities that caused this devastation. Others merely try their best to survive on what’s left. And then there’s these two dorks – Noh-Varr, who wishes to fuck off back to space so he can come back with an army, and Tommy, who’s helping only because he has nowhere else to go. At least, that was how they both wanted it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World's End Dancehall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maelikki](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Maelikki).



> Notes: Much love for Ari, my gorgeous and amazing beta. :3 And thanks to the housemate, who listened as I rambled about my ideas for this even though he didn’t quite understand. 
> 
>  
> 
>  

“How many more parts do we need to make this fucking thing?” Tommy bellowed, glaring at the annotated map in his hands. The marked-off areas were starting to form a large circle around the dot marked as “home base,” and the notes were starting to become illegible, but it was still possible for Tommy to understand as he jotted down more of them.

“As many as it will take, so stop whining,” was the Kree’s reply. He was still picking through the wreckage of the old sentinel, analysing each part and throwing the ones he felt were needed into a large bag. “The sentinels are the best chance I have at getting the working parts I need, but that’s if it still works.”

Tommy shivered and hauled his coat back on, itching to get up and get moving. The sun had just risen, the clouds taking on a pink hue, and the chill of the night still clung to Tommy’s skin.

“Can’t we use a phone or some shit? Saves lugging all this junk about.” His fingers drummed on his knee, hating the wait.

“Too small and hard to find, plus they won’t do the job right. Besides, you see many of them around? It’d be fun to see you try and find one. No, these are the parts we need – these sentinels have to be communicating with each other somehow, and the technology they use is certainly advanced enough for the purposes we’d be needing them for.” Noh-Varr picked up what looked like a large box, grimaced and threw it over his shoulder. The sentinel skull – the last one they’d searched through on this site – was hollowing out, and after a few more minutes, Noh-Varr booted it aside.

“We have what we need, but I doubt any of it is in working condition. Whoever did this, they didn’t waste time destroying as much of the heads as they could. Which makes sense, it’s the quickest way to deactivate them…do you think it could have been your old group who did this?” he asked, and Tommy looked up from the map to glare at him.

“You seriously think they could have done this? There’s, what, at least ten of them here? I mean, Billy’s tough – hell, Katie-Kate could kick my ass – but this many would have been too much for…” he said, before he noticed the arrows sticking out of the mangled metal chunks.

“…Okay, maybe it was them. But they had to have had help.” An idea came to him, a memory of an old friend explaining to him how the sentinels were likely to have been designed and how ‘it would be good to assume their brains are actually in their heads,’ but he dismissed the idea that came with it – if David were with them, then he would be glad the guy was alive, but still reluctant to see him again. He shot Noh-Varr a look, and burst into a run, knowing that they could make it to their base before the sentinels became too active in the daylight. The Kree followed close behind, but not enough to ever outrun him, and Tommy felt the exhilaration of the sound of pounding feet and deep breathing that was near, but nowhere near enough to win.

Their base was the basement of the gutted remains of an apartment – Tommy often wondered what happened to the people inside it, but he figured he’d never be able to know. He ran up the building side before settling down on the roof, his feet dangling off the edge. Peering over the edge, he giggled at Noh-Varr leisurely walking up the side, taking his sweet old time. Tommy glanced up, and the desolate landscape made his heart sink, just like it did every time he saw it. He could never believe this was New York – it looked more like a trash heap, now that the Sentinels were done with it. He mourned for the time when he was in awe of the city’s activity instead of its emptiness.

It was easy for a lot of people to say that Quentin Quire destroyed the world. It was a gross oversimplification of the facts, yes – Quire himself had no idea that the spark he created lit a fuse that set off the bombs of the apocalypse, rather than the revolution he’d been craving – but it was still easy to trace everything back to him and that arms conference. Quentin Quire had asked the world to stay tuned in to see how the humans would react, and the humans reacted as expected – putting out as many sentinels as possible, targeting Utopia with a rage that surprised no one. What surprised the mutants, and everyone else in the world caught up in these events, was how rapidly the sentinel models improved, and how little time it took for everything to go catastrophically wrong. What went wrong was that something – no one entirely knew what, but some _thing_ – had happened to the sentinels, had made them stronger and better able to communicate and mobilise, and decide amongst themselves that all biological life was a threat. Nowadays, the only people to really remain had powers, and the irony that the only beings to really defend themselves against this threat were the only ones to be targeted wasn’t lost on anyone. It was only once this had happened that the Avengers and the X-Men were able to band together, for all the good it did anyone. Being killed by a sentinel wasn’t the worst that could happen to you, either – being taken by one was worse, because the unlucky bastard was likely to be assimilated by them. No one knew if the world could ever be like it was before, and in all the chaos that occurred, no one had any idea where Quentin Quire was, or if he was even alive.

Things had started going wrong for the Young Avengers specifically before this, however, when they found the Scarlet Witch. Everyone had been so focused on Billy and how he wouldn’t move away from the window for months that they hadn’t really paid attention to the news, and it was only when it became increasingly relevant that Tommy decided to leave. Mutants were being persecuted at a higher rate than before, the sentinels were being dispatched and improved so much – Tommy knew he had to help somehow, and when no one else would go with him, he went alone. When the sentinels went crazy and started bombing everything they could, Billy never called (when he still had a working phone, that is) or came to look for him. He wasn’t with them for the decimation of New York, and they never came to look for him once most of the towns in New Jersey went, either. He’d been to where his parent’s house used to be – there was nothing there. He didn’t know if they survived, and after everything they’d done to him, he wasn’t sure he cared either way. By the time he bumped into David, round about where Chicago used to be, he’d decided that Billy didn’t care, and never had. You don’t abandon family during the end of the world, and Tommy couldn’t forgive Billy for it.

Now that he had Noh-Varr, he wondered how necessary Billy and his company were. Their relationship was…interesting, to say the least. They bitched and whined at each other for different reasons (Tommy had to smile when he remembered Noh’s complaint of “What do you MEAN you’ve never listened to George Thorogood and The Destroyers?!”), but it was just…nice. It was so nice having someone around who actually understood him a little, even when there were so few people left.

A cynical part of him thought “this is the kind of company you keep when you’re lonely,” but he never believed it for even a second.

By the time Noh-Varr settled in behind Tommy on the roof, the mutant was busy noting down more things on the map. The marked areas were becoming more numerous, and a frown creased Noh-Varr’s face before he wondered aloud, “If we could take down a sentinel ourselves, we could...”

“No. Nope. No fuckin’ way are we doing that.”

Noh-Varr chuckled at that. “Why not? We could take one, and we could guarantee that we’d be able to get the parts we need.”

Tommy sighed, as if he needed to state the obvious. “Dude, they blew up most of the fuckin’ planet, there are more of them than there are of us, and if we get spotted, we’re done for. We could take one, but you’re nuts if you think we could do it without being noticed by fifty of ‘em.”

“…Is the falling-out you had with your brother really bad enough that you wouldn’t consider joining up with them again?”

He flinched as he felt a hand slap against his shoulder. He shrugged it off quickly, still not sure how he felt about that kind of contact yet.

“…Yeah, it was. I mean, I woulda let bygones be bygones, but even when things went to shit, they never bothered trying to find me. They can fuckin’ rot for all I care,” he ranted, and he hated how much venom was in his voice, “They stuck by themselves, so I don’t need ‘em.”

He met Noh-Varr’s eyes, frosted over with a piercing blue, and there was a long pause before the Kree spoke.

“Am I to take that as meaning that you do not need me, either?”

Tommy shot a look over his shoulder. “The fuck are you talking about? You’re my friend, right?”

The hope in those spring-green eyes made Noh-Varr squirm in his seat. “Well, I may be leaving you soon. My intention was always to get off of this shit-heap of a planet. And yes, I would hopefully be bringing back as much help as can be provided, and the sentinels may be destroyed for good – but if that isn’t possible, then I may simply leave. You’ve known this for a while…do you hold it against me?”

The words made Tommy’s heart sink into his gut, and he covered up his discomfort with a cocky grin. “Hell no. Takes a lot to stop caring for your own flesh and blood, and I managed that fair enough – why should I care when some guy I only just about know leaves?”

“I think you do. I think you still care. People cannot be hurt by something if they do not care, and people cannot be angry if there is no motivation to be so. I can tell that I’ve upset you just now – are you sure you’re going to be okay without me?”

“Of course I am, I don’t need anyone! You think you’re special because you’re leaving, you think I’m not used to it by now – well, everyone leaves, and you ain’t special. I don’t give a shit.” Tommy knew it was overly aggressive, that his shouting wasn’t going to make it any better, but he didn’t care much at that moment.

“Tommy, if I…if I could take you with me, would you want to?”

“…What?”

“I know you don’t care for your family anymore – and if you do, then you’re doing an awfully good job pretending that you don’t. Could you leave them behind entirely, so that you can stay with me?” Noh repeated, his gaze steady and intense. 

“I…Noh, you’re being ridiculous,” Tommy settled on saying, the grin being a moment too late to be believable. “I mean, hell, this shit you just found probably won’t even work. We can talk about it when leaving is actually something you can do, mmmkay?”

Noh-Varr opened his mouth to speak, but Tommy was gone before he could get a word out. Times like this, he had no idea what was and was not appropriate, and seeing the expressions flit across the mutant’s face, almost quicker than the eye could see, made him feel shame burn deep in his gut over how badly he’d just failed. He huffed out a breath and gripped his arms in frustration, knowing that he would have to keep pressing the issue and that it would deeply hurt the two of them.

 Noh followed him into their home base, and he dumped the bag of parts on the floor. He scanned them with his wrist-mounted monitor (he smiled as he remembered explaining to him why it can’t hook up to the Kree Supreme Intelligence anyway, only to be met with “Well that’s fuckin’ useless, ain’t it?”), and it indicated that most of what was there was unlikely to work. Nevertheless, he was about to get to work when Tommy asked, from the pile of old clothes in the corner that made up his bed, “How badly do you want to leave?”

Noh-Varr looked up, and it struck him as odd that Tommy would be this…vulnerable with him. He settled into place, checking over what he’d already built. “It depends on if I’m better suited to working here, or on Hala. Still, it is my duty to protect this planet – I should stay as long as possible.”

“That your only reason?”

“No. I have…friends. A friend. It makes my time here wondrous, really,” he admitted, feeling his face grow warmer.

Tommy grinned, and he had a thought. “So, you really liked pop culture and shit, right?”

Noh smiled back, liking where this was going. “Of course.”

“Alrighty then,” Tommy said, a certain overconfidence creeping into his tone, “who’s better, Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris?”

“Hmm.” Noh pondered it over for a moment. “I would have to say Norris, if only because I apparently look like him when I grow a beard.”

They both burst into laughter, before Tommy shushed them both, as if they were at a sleepover. “You grew a beard, dude?”

“It seemed appropriate at the time.”

And they talked for hours about it – hours that Noh-Varr knew he shouldn’t have been wasting on conversation, extra hours that kept an obviously exhausted Tommy from sleeping, but they loved the chats and the jokes too much to know when to stop.

After a while, Noh-Varr, still smiling, asked “Seriously though? I have plasma gauntlets that can become any weapon I so choose…”

“Dude, just call ‘em space guns.”

“No, I’m not going to call them space guns. But I have those, as well as being Kree, and as a mutant, your power is beyond comprehension. Why can’t we get the parts we need directly?”

And all the humour drained from Tommy’s face, because Noh-Varr didn’t know about David. Of course, he’d met Noh-Varr shortly after he lost track of David in that attack, disoriented and needing any kind of shelter, but finding David was always one of his goals. They’d been a good team – there were so many times when Tommy knew he would have died if not for David, and vice versa. They gelled in a way that he hadn’t really done with anyone except for his own brother, and possibly Noh-Varr. But the earlier evidence of the Young Avengers made Tommy realise that David was probably still alive somehow – but remembering how he’d been taken by _them_ , how Tommy had looked for him for days on end without any luck, it seemed hard to imagine that he’d be in the best conditions. The idea that David might not even be human anymore made his head feel hot and full of buzzing flies.

He rolled over to face the wall, and curled up like a hedgehog. “You can’t. Just, no.” He sighed, and made a waving gesture towards where Noh sat. “I’m sleepin’, I’ll see you when I’m not.” He closed his eyes, and unconsciousness came to him in a flash. Noh-Varr looked him over and had to suppress a laugh – even in hard times, when an attack could come at any moment, the speedster was still capable of deep sleep. It was endearing, to say the least.

Noh-Varr looked over the pile of parts, and sighed. Whether it was even worth making the thing was starting to plague him, but he grit his teeth and sat down to it anyway. Procrastinating on it would get him nowhere, and hopefully, a way off this ruined mess of a planet would become a possibility for the two of them.

He got to work, as quietly as he could.

\--

 _Well,_ he thought, looking at the scattered mess his work had left behind, _That was a complete waste of time and effort._

None of the vital parts worked, and none of it could have been converted into a form that would have worked. The basic shape of the communicator was done, and many of the wires and switches did work, but the power and reach was still abysmal. He needed to find ones that worked.

He looked back over to where Tommy was sleeping – after more than three hours, it seemed disproportionately impressive to the kree – and thought over what his options were. He could try and look for more parts, and hope they did the job. He could try and destroy a sentinel by himself, get the parts straight from the source.

He could just stay on earth with Tommy forever, he thought. He could always do that.

That he even wanted to stay on the planet for any reason made him feel deeply uncomfortable, but watching the sleeping figure, he couldn’t deny that Tommy was a very good reason to stay. He was also a very good reason to get this finished, so they could both escape – either way, the idea of leaving Tommy altogether made his heart hurt in a way he wasn’t sure he could articulate, for reasons he wasn’t sure he understood.

All he knew was that he needed to communicate with the Supreme Intelligence. Somehow, in some way, he needed their guidance, and without them, he was lost. And how could he protect Tommy if he didn’t know what to do with himself?

He got up, his mind made up, and Tommy woke up to the banging of the door that led to the stairwell.

 --

The second Tommy realised what Noh-Varr was going to do, he phased through the door and was out the building in milliseconds. He ran for hundreds of miles, crossing the country more times than he cared until he finally found Noh-Varr. He was in exactly the sort of state that was expected and typical of the Kree warrior – that is, beaten bloody and neck-deep in machinery. Tommy rushed up a nearby building, jumping off and throwing many of the sentinels away with an angry thrust of his hand into the ground, the vibrations from it raising the winds and dust nearby.

Noh-Varr glanced round in confusion, before a cheerful grin materialised as he saw the flash of white. “Tommy! I had a feeling you would be intrigued enough at my absence to try and commence a search for me – while I am doing fairly well considering the circumstances, your aid is –“

“I don’t give a shit! I fucking told you this would be a terrible idea, and I fucking knew that this is what would happen! It doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure this shit out, Noh, Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” Tommy yelled in reply, moving to be back-to-back with Noh, the sentinels quickly circling them.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I know not to start a fight with these derelicts again.”

“Noh-Varr, technically WE count as derelicts! We need a plan!” he yelled, throwing out his hand and destroying one on impulse. He heard the blasting of lasers, and the crumpled metal that came with it. The sentinels Tommy had knocked away were steadily getting back onto their feet.

“How much ammo you got in your space guns?” Tommy asked, eyeing them nervously.

“Enough. Do you trust me?”

“What?”

“I asked if you trusted me.”

“…Well, for a guy who’s express goal is to one day fuck off back to space…yeah. Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Good.” He turned back to the sentinels, readying his pistols. “Because I believe this is a fight we can win. There are ten of them, and it would be hard, but we can disappear before they bring back-up. Trust me, we can win this.”

“…Okay.”

“Okay. We need to stay close together here, so they can’t get at us. I will shoot any that try and attack from a distance, while you disintegrate any who dare come in close. Do you understand, Tommy?”

“Sounds good to me, except this doesn’t exempt you from a yell when we get back, alright?!”

“Sounds fair. Let’s do this.”

And they did. They operated like a singular being, moving into the space that the other created, and time had slowed to a crawl for Tommy and Noh still kept up with him. He knew it was that whatever run thing Noh did, when he cleared his mind of everything that wasn’t metal-bending violence and the glory and pride of the Kree Empire, but Tommy didn’t know that the Kree Empire was not the thing Noh-Varr had glory and pride in that moment. They broke everything with power, certainty, and above all, a swiftness that couldn’t be contained.

Hours of fighting had been over in three minutes, and the second their path was clear, Noh gathered what he needed and they ran to the other end of the country. Once they were a safe distance away, Tommy rammed Noh in the side and marched up to him, fuming.

“You shut the fuck up and listen to me, okay?! Never put yourself in that kind of danger again! Do you hear me?”

Noh picked himself off the ground, dusting himself off. “I do. I find it odd, however, that you would get so vitriolic at the idea of me being harmed, as I can take care of…”

“NO. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to say that I’m being an overprotective idiot, because if you died just now? That would have been on me. You dying would have been entirely my fault, and I don’t want that, you hear?” And before Noh-Varr could say anything else, Tommy was running, back to the only place he could call home anymore.

Noh came to find him on the remains of the roof, glaring at the map and ticking off where they’d just been. Tommy didn’t look up.

“…You do care. You do.” Tommy glanced up at where Noh-Varr stood, but remained silent.

“It is…it is good to see you care. I always knew that you did, but to see you come to my aid was just…”

“...I fucked up.”

“I’m sorry, you what?”

“I fucked up. See, Sentinels attacked, and I fucked up, and they took him. My friend, from before I met you. I have reason to think that he’s still alive, but in what state, I’m not sure. And that’s not something to pity him for, it’s something to be mad at me for. I fucked up, and I almost fucked up again today. It has nothing to do with how much or little I care, because at this point, I just don’t want to lose anyone else.”

Tommy laughed, his voice heavy with unshed tears.

“And yeah, it’s stupid. I can be all emotional and say hey, don’t leave, but that sounds like I’m super lonely or something, right? And it’s not that I’m lonely. If I wanted to, I could crawl back to where Billy is, and I can make him think he did nothing wrong, and I could be around people – I ain’t lonely. It’s that I like you. I wasn’t lying when I said I was doing fine by myself – but I don’t want to be without you.” He turned back to the map, and the sky was, once again, orange from the setting of the sun.

“Tommy, I’m sorry. I’ve done nothing but fail you lately, and I need to apologise for that.”

“Fail me?” Tommy asked, waving a hand dismissvely. “You’re fine, what’re you talking about?”

Noh-Varr took a few steps forward and crouched next to the speedster, his expression strangely uncomfortable. “I mean that I failed you. I made it seem like an either or choice, like you could have either me or your brother. That was…it was unfair of me, when you can have both. How would you feel if I never left?”

Tommy froze, before looking up, a cautious smile lighting up his face. “I…I’d be pretty hyped. But you want to leave, I shouldn’t keep you here if…”

“Tommy, the reason I want to save this planet is because you’re on it. You’ve been so good to me, and wouldn’t it make more sense for me to stay here and make sure the sentinels are fully disposed of before going home?” he elaborated, and his own expression morphed into a smile. “No, Tommy, I will ask the Kree Supreme Intelligence to come down and aid us, and if I am to go home, it is either with you or not at all.”

“Oh. That’s…well, I appreciate that a lot. Thanks, Noh…” Tommy started saying, before Noh leant in and kissed him.

It was one of those moments that, for as long as he remained alive, Tommy would always remember. His eyes had widened in surprise, and he felt the blood burning in his face, but he felt strangely at ease with everything. The orange glow of the sky cast Noh in shadow, and the Kree radiated warmph against his chilled skin, it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Like for once, in this shithole of a planet, there was hope. Like everything was alright, for once, and Tommy slowly closed his eyes and savoured the moment for as long as he could.

It was several minutes before they gathered the guts to leave the ledge and finish the communicator. Come what may, at least they had that, Tommy thought, his smile bittersweet.

\--

Tommy leant against the wall, watching Noh-Varr flip the necessary switches and press buttons that did things Tommy wouldn’t have been able to understand, and there was a single breathless moment of silence before the machine crackled into life. Noh-Varr cackled in delight, pumping his fist and yelling “Fuck yeah!” before getting to work setting up the connection (Tommy knew this was the guy who’d once carved “fuck you” into New York, but it still sounded strange to hear him say that). He turned to Tommy, still grinning elatedly, and started yammering about how they needed to be respectful and polite, and how the first thing he’d ask is if he could speak his own language and translate when needed, and a billion and other niceties that Tommy forgot the moment he heard them. Tommy couldn’t help but smile at Noh’s obvious joy, but at the same time, he couldn’t untense his muscles. He knew what adults were like, had seen what adults had done to the both of them – he had no idea why Noh was so hopeful.

In fact, now that he thought about it, wouldn’t the near-total wipeout of life on Earth be something the Kree would be aware of…?

The room was illuminated with an all encompassing emerald light, and what Tommy assumed was the Kree Supreme Intelligence appeared – Noh prostrated himself before the figure, and Tommy gave a stiff bow.

“<Noh-Varr, your call has been heard and the Supreme Intelligence will now respond. What is your purpose now?>” it said, in a language that Tommy didn’t understand, but Noh-Varr gave him a reassuring smile before responding, the language flowing off his tongue much more naturally than English ever did.

“<Supreme Intelligence, I stand humbly in your presence and I request your aid. The planet Earth has almost irreparably fallen, and while I understand it was my duty to protect it…well, gods and warriors of all stripes have failed. While there are patches of resistance spread across, we are outnumbered, and your aid would be – >” he said, before being cut off.

“<You tell us nothing we were not already aware of, Protector. We were well aware that you failed in your duty, but we will not vilify you for this failing.>”

Noh-Varr’s face grew pale, and he shot a confused look at Tommy. “They said they already knew…?”

“Being honest with you here, I figured that it would kinda be big news for a lotta places,” he snarked in response, shooting the hologram a furious glare.

“…But that means that they…<you knew and you did nothing? I was under the impression that you bid me to protect the Earth. Why do nothing when you know it falls?>” Noh-Varr demanded, his tone a lot harder than it had been before.

“<It is not a difficult situation to grasp, protector,>” it said, with a tone that sounded to Tommy like a sneer. “<We studied the threat that has consumed Earth, and determined that it is unlikely to affect Hala. Therefore, we let it be.>”

“<You let…you let it be.>” Noh’s face grew dark, and he seemed more tense and angry than Tommy had ever seen him. “<And I don’t suppose you cared to mention this to me at any point, did you?>”

“<Being blunt, no. We do not care for Earth, and we do not care for you.>”

Noh-Varr sighed, seeming more tired than anything else. “Well then, Supreme Intelligence, if I can be blunt – you can just go and fuck yourselves.”

With that, Noh-Varr flipped a switch and the coms link was cut off, leaving nothing but darkness once more. At first, there was nothing but silence – but out of the gloom, Tommy could hear Noh-Varr laughing, so quiet he had to strain to hear it. The Kree turned to him, his expression more conflicted than it had ever been, and his words made Tommy’s heart break:

“Is it awful of me that I’m almost glad they did that? Because now I can stay here with you. There isn’t a choice now…and it hurts. But now, I have no obligations, except to you.”

Tommy put a hand on his shoulder, and Noh-Varr pulled him into a tight hug, obviously trying hard not to cry. Tommy had gotten used to adults giving up him, but he figured that it was a first for Noh, and he gently stroked the kree’s back. He had no idea how much time passed before Noh let him go and straightened up, passing a hand under each eye before letting out a harsh breath.

“I’m fine.  I guess…I didn’t know what I was expecting. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t…well, that. They just didn’t care, Tommy. Not a bit. We’re on our own now.”

Tommy paused, thinking it over.

“So…what now?”

Noh-Varr looked over the machine that had taken so much blood, sweat and tears to build. “We find others, and we fight. Even if we can’t fix this mess, we can try, and even if we die horribly and violently, then at least we’ll have tried our best and would go out together. At least, that’s my plan. Don’t know if you have any better ideas.”

Tommy grinned. “Nah, you’re more the ideas man than I am.” He fidgeted on the spot for a moment, wondering if he could say it, before adding “Although I’ll have to make a bit of a change to that – I know exactly where we’re going. There’s a friend I need to see, and I need to tell my brother he’s an asshole. We can do that first.”

They packed up their things, and, smiling, took each other’s hands and took off to the open road. And Tommy delighted once more in the sound and feel of someone just beside him, keeping up but never overtaking. And for the first time since the world ended, Tommy felt like he was strong enough to rebuild it. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was super enthusiastic about the idea of writing these two in a post apocalypse, even if the ship isn’t a favourite of mine (I figured, if it’s an alternate universe, I can spin it however I like). I’m disappointed because there was a really interesting subplot to do with Prodigy which I had to cut out, although he’s still given a mention here – it wasn’t gelling with the rest of the story, though, so I left it. I WILL be writing fic based on what I had to remove, though, mark my words.


End file.
